Post navigation

“I wrote a song like Everybody Knows to close that gap [between private life & public life] and the only way to close it is by speaking of it humourously, speaking of it as a joke, and saying the things that we all know” Leonard Cohen on Everybody Knows

Without the music and nonsense rhymes, Everybody Knows would be pretty hard to take – the funeral quality of the message. It also pushes things very, very far just to get a laugh and that makes it amusing. It gives a jingle effect that as I say modifies and mitigates the heaviness of the vision. I think that everybody does know these things…These ideas were started a long time ago in my work, but the romantic world is just as Lorca said in that poem Take This Waltz. These romantic images that he’s using…he knows they’re rotten, he know they’re old, he knows they’re finished. That’s why it’s such a modern poem… There seems to be some appetite to say those words: ‘Everybody knows it’s coming apart.’ Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it’s just because I’m middle-aged and maybe nothing’s coming apart but, to me, those images, those romantic expectations, those religious expectations, the political vocabulary, are obsolete. I’ve never felt so much difference between the private life and the public life. There doesn’t seem to be a public life and there’s nobody speaking in a way that seems to address me… I don’t know why. Maybe I’m just getting old, maybe not, maybe I’m right, so I wrote a song like Everybody Knows to close that gap and the only way to close it is by speaking of it humourously, speaking of it as a joke, and saying the things that we all know.

Cohencentric.com Hits Since Opening March 7, 2015

A Medical Note On The Death Of Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen’s Lost Album – Songs For Rebecca

Songs For Rebecca, a 1970s Leonard Cohen-John Lissauer project, was abruptly abandoned after several songs were recorded. Find out how it began & ended, which songs were recorded & what happened to them, and listen to a recording of a live performance of those songs: Leonard Cohen’s Lost Album: Songs For Rebecca

Leonard Cohen’s Passionate Version Of “So Long, Marianne”

Leonard Cohen has performed many versions of "So Long, Marianne." The 1993 Oslo concert rendition includes not only a radically different arrangement but also two verses not found on any album. The impact is dramatic.

Leonard Cohen On His Songs

In Memory Of Leonard Cohen

Since Leonard Cohen's death Nov 7, 2016, I've developed a list of selected articles and posts that are especially informative, gracious, interesting, or evocative. The complete list with live links can be found at In Memory Of Leonard Cohen

In Memory Of Marianne Ihlen, Leonard Cohen’s Muse

Marianne Ihlen, immortalized in “So Long, Marianne,” died July 28, 2016. She was a frequent visitor to this site and much beloved. Revealing posts about her and Leonard can be found at

The Cohen-Dylan Interface

The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say 'Look, I don’t understand a fucking thing at all – Hallelujah!'

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen’s Montreal

The best articles about Leonard Cohen’s Montreal homes and haunts as well as videos and a list of pertinent landmarks.